Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism
Humility and Humiliation
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:5th Oct '21
Should be back in stock very soon
Humility and humiliation have an awkward, often unacknowledged intimacy. Humility may be a queenly, cardinal or monkish virtue, while humiliation points to an affective state at the extreme end of shame. Yet a shared etymology links the words to lowliness and, further down, to the earth. As this study suggests, like the terms in question, T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett share an imperfect likeness. Between them is a common interest in states of abjection, shame and suffering – and possible responses to such states. Tracing the relation between negative affect, ethics, and aesthetics, Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism demonstrates how these two major modernists recuperate the affinity between humility and humiliation - concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theology.
This is an exemplary work in the singular clarity of its argument, and the marshalling of its considerable primary and secondary resources. -- Prof. John Higgins * Honorable Mention, ASSAF Humanities book prize *
There is…a strong ethical dimension to De Villiers’s argument, which hinges on humility’s status as a form of self-sacrifice or self-lowering…. De Villiers’s argument on ethics is deeply persuasive, all the more so because it includes a strong concern with aesthetics. The problem for the writer who writes about humility is that it is not a final state, a destination at which an individual may arrive.De Villiers’s study is deeply impressive. It is highly original and erudite, yet engaging and, yes, humble. The monograph appears in the Other Becketts series, which seeks "to think differently […] about Beckett’s work, to question, that is, even the questions we ask about it" (vi). In my view, it does all this and then a whole lot more. -- Prof. Mike Marais, Rhodes University * Journal of Literary Studies, 38.2 *
Can a discourse highlighting the low and the humble accommodate kudos and praise? Happily, such transcendental reserve does not apply to a reviewer. Therefore, I claim loudly, boldly, and proudly, with as much emphasis as I can muster, that here is an innovative and groundbreaking book. I also add that Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism does not limit its intervention to the two authors examined, but proposes a rethinking and reframing of the entire field of modernism. [...] ...Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism proves to be one of the most exciting and rewarding books on modernism I have read in a long time. -- Jean-Michel Rabaté * Journal of Modern Literature *
What a mighty monograph on modernist humility this is! In this extensively-researched and clearly-written study, Rick de Villiers examines at the undersides of modernism to fruitfully reveal tropes of weakness, debasement, lowliness and Christian-cum-humanistic meekness. Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism is a rare work of interpretative innovation and textual close reading that must not be missed by specialists on Beckett and Eliot, and will be rewarding for all those interested in new approaches to modernism. -- Matthew Feldman, University of York
- Commended for Academy of Science of South Africa Humanities Book Prize 2023
ISBN: 9781474479035
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
264 pages